Early Life
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Oldfield and her siblings were raised in the Roman Catholic faith of their mother, Maureen. Spending her childhood in Reading, Berkshire, Oldfield studied ballet from the age of four and won numerous competitions in all styles of dance, including ballet, tap and modern. At the age of eleven, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dancing, then located in Holland Park, London, and two years later was starred to move on to the Royal Ballet School at White Lodge. However, she gave up ballet two years later, and achieved three A-Levels at Grade A. She also studied classical piano to Grade 7. All her school years were spent at St Joseph's Convent School, Reading, where she became friends with Marianne Faithfull.
Oldfield then went on to read English Literature and Philosophy at Bristol University. She had originally planned to move on to postgraduate studies. However, following a spontaneous near-death experience while walking on a beach in the spring of 1968, she began to write songs which she had never done before and from that moment she knew she wanted a life in music.
Read more about this topic: Sally Oldfield
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)